


Tale of the Tiefling

by TheLostWhisperer



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/M, Original Characters - Freeform, Tiefling, fey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 12:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13214205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLostWhisperer/pseuds/TheLostWhisperer
Summary: The backstory (And the continuation of sans a campaign) of one of my DND Characters, Magiera. Her life as she pushes through what she thinks she has to be because of her race, and what she wants to be.





	Tale of the Tiefling

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of her story. And why my DM hates me for making them so long and complex. Also anyone know where I got Magiera's name from as well as her con name?
> 
> Hint: Mag’s real name has a letter changed as I didn’t know if I’d be allowed to use the original name in the campaign for the purpose of posting a fic about her. As I don’t want to get in trouble for it from the people who own her namesake.

A dark shape moved in an alley, her shoulders hunched as she peered out into the street. As a human man walked down the street, hands clutching a map tightly, his face contorted with worry as he walked down the road, her mouth twisted into a smirk. She stepped out into the street in front of the man and cleared her throat. He looked up from his map, took one look at her and jumped backward in fright. A hand dropping to a sword on his hip.

His whole body trembled in fear as he took in her appearance; lavender skin, small twisting horns, shining silver eyes with no pupils or whites, and a long spaded tail. All the marks of a tiefling. He swallowed hard and took a step back, and she matched his movement taking a step towards him.

“Are you lost?”

She kept her voice soft and tried to make her face look sympathetic. She stepped closer to him again, and this time he didn’t draw away from her. She gave him a closed-lip smile, not wanting to frighten him once again with her fangs. She managed to get close to him and look at his map, he had an area on the map circled in red.

“Yes, you are. If you're trying to get there,” she pointed to the red circle, with a sharp painted black nail, then looked up at him and he flinched, “then I can help you get there. No fee.”

The man looked dubious, obviously untrusting of her. He kept his gaze on her, as he spoke.

“What’s your game, demon-spawn?”

She suppressed a glare, her annoyance rising with him as she forced herself to frown.

“It’s Céline,” The lie came out smoothly, and she looked up him with her practiced earnest expression, “Just because I’m a tiefling doesn’t mean I’m evil. We do try to break that stereotype. I want to help prove that, that’s my game.”

He narrowed his eyes as he tried to tell if she lied, before nodding and relaxing just a bit, “Alright, I don’t think you’re lying Hell-spaw-, I- Uh… Céline,” he caught himself before he finished the slur, “Can you help me get to that store?”

She nodded, “Of course, just this way.” She turned on her toes and started walking back the way he came. He started walking after her, and after about a minute of walking she slowed down to match his pace, feet perfectly in time with his. He didn’t seem as nervous as he did before, in fact, he seemed to be getting more and more comfortable in her charismatic presence.

She looked up at him and met his gaze, and his gaze snapped back to the road in front of him. She raised an eyebrow but ignored it opting to make conversation.

“So what brings you to this city? You can’t be from here if you ended up in the slums,” she tilted her head so dark bangs covered her eyes, and she flicked her gaze down to see the pouch in his hip swollen with cash, before looking up to him again, to find him still watching the road.

“Hmmm, where do I start? Well, my name is Sturdil Deepstag, and I lived in a small farming village on the Crescent Road, where everyone knew each other. I was born in the middle of seven brothers and two sisters. So it was always a race to get things, and I didn’t like not being the best at that, so once I reached 20 I struck out on my own. From there I traveled north and…”

She let him trail on as he kept telling his story, she wasn’t interested she just needed him distracted. She gently bit her lips as she moved a bit closer to him acting like she was intently listing to him, as her hand shot out and unhooked his pouch. It weighed less than she thought it would, and she hooked it to her own belt, taking her rock filled pouch off, discreetly dumping enough that the weight would be closer and hooked it into place on him. She pulled back and made it look like she saw something down an alleyway, pausing slightly to throw him off.

The man, Sturdil she recalled, stopped and looked down the alley too, worry caressing his face again. “Is there something there?”

The tiefling shook her head and lashed her tail as she constructed another lie for the seemingly gullible man. But it came out too quick and awkward.

“I… Uh… I thought I saw someone down there, but they bolted when they saw me, might be someone I know from the slums.”

Sturdil’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at her leaning forward to see her face better, and the first time in their meeting the tiefling took a step away from him, “You’re lying, I can tell.”

Her eyes widened in shock, at being caught in a lie and she reached up to worry one of her horns. Her cheeks turned a shade darker and she turned her gaze from him, “Um, you caught me. I didn’t see anyone, and I only thought I heard something. So I lied so that you wouldn’t think I was mad.” Another quick lie, if he saw through this she was going to have to make a bolt for it.

But he didn’t, he stood up straight and laughed loudly, clamping a hand on her shoulder.

“Céline, you’re too funny, with your confidence from before I didn’t take you as someone to check each little sound, but I was wrong. You actually remind me of a girl from my village now, she always had this dream of going out and being a big shot hero tried to act like one too. But she’d jump at each little sound.”

She side-eyed the hand on her shoulder before scowling at the comparison. But that sent him into more of a laughing fit, he managed to calm himself and wipe the tears from his eyes. “She made that face too when I’d tease her about it. You’re just her as a dev- tiefling.” He caught himself again.

She kept her scowl as she walked past him, breaking his hold on her shoulder and whacking his leg with her tail as it passed him, just hard enough to sting.

“Ow! Seems I struck a nerve,” he chucked but dropped the conversation and trotted to catch up with her, “So it’s your turn.”

“Huh?”

“To tell me about you. I told you a lot about myself, so I want the same back.”

She tried to hide a grimace, but he saw and matched it with a frown, “It’s only fair.”

“Fine. I grew up here with my parents and brother, never been past the city wall. I’m not exciting.” She left out how for the past years she’d been apprenticing under a scam artist from her slums, learning the ways of deception. Till one day he vanished, she suspected that he got arrested. Left more fools for her to take advantage of, at least.

“Are they tieflings too?”

The woman tilted her head back and laughed, “You really know nothing about us do you?” She lowered her gaze, and sighed, “But yes they are, they try harder than anyone to break how people see us,” she let her gaze fall, some of her real identity slipping in, “Some of the tieflings in the slums just give into them, why spend your whole life trying to break something when at the end of it all no one’s going to acknowledge it or care, you’ll still just be demon-spawn.”

Sturdil looked away when she copied his slur from earlier, “Céline I-”

“Save it, I don’t care if you’re sorry. You said it and that’s what you think you even almost called me one not long ago, one teifling isn’t going to change your mind about all of us. Besides we’re almost at where you want to be.”

They were in a nicer part of the city, streets made of stone and not mud and where many were giving her a side eye for her looks. She just held her shoulders back and kept a stony face, both at their gazes and at Sturdil. Silence loomed over them as the approached the building marked on his map.

“There you go,” she flicked her wrist towards the storefront not even bothering to see what it sold, “have a nice time here. Don’t wander back into the slums.”

Without looking up at him, she turned and started back the way they came. She could almost feel his gaze burning it to her back, but she only quickened her pace, making sure that he would lose sight of her as she wove through a crowd. The dark first alley she saw she turned down, her dark clothes blending into the shadows.

She leaned against a wall, and let her shoulders drop along with her persona. She wasn’t Céline anymore; she was back to herself as Magiera. She took a breath to collect herself. A hand on one of her horns took her from her thoughts. She quickly reached for a dagger, hidden under her top before craning her neck to see her assailant. Standing before her was her older brother, with a scowl on his face. She let the dagger fall to the ground.

“Eoin! What are you doing here?”

“Hand them over,” he waved a hand in front of her face.

She gave him a wide grin, feigning her innocence, “What do you mean?”

Eoin tightened his grip on her horn and shook her head, “Do I have to shake your head right? The coins!”

She gripped onto his wrist, to still him from more shaking, as she tried to focus her now swirling vision, “They are mine now. He was an idiot.”

“Magiera! Now!”

“No!”

Eoin glared at her before using his strength to force her to the wall, careful not to actually harm her. He snatched the coin purse from her belt before she could stop him. He backed up from her as she tried to break his hold on her again. He waved the bag in front of her nose, “We don’t steal!”

She tried to snatch it back, but he moved it from her reach, “We are returning these now. No fighting back or I’m shaking you again, this time till you walk like a drunk.”

He released her horn at last, and started walking away, pausing to look back at her, “Hurry up.”

Magiera, rubbed the base of her horn where it was growing sore. Slowly following after him, she picked up her dagger, not bothering to clean it off before sheathing it. Getting into a fight and getting her head shaken more wasn’t worth that load of coins, she could make up about that much by gambling later. “So you know, the guy thinks my name is Céline, so you have to call me that.”

Eoin made his way through the crowd back towards the store, politely excusing himself the whole while, in contrast to Magiera who forced her way through. When they reached the store, they saw Sturdil being forced out of the store by a burly half-orc shopkeep. Even from their distance, they could hear the shouting.

The shopkeep was holding Sturdil by the collar and shoved him to the ground. The man hit the ground hard, the air knocked after him. He sat up quickly, “Sir I swear I had the coins!”

“Rocks ain’t coins!”

Eoin gave his sister a wicked glare before jogging over to the fight, standing before Sturdil. She could see him flick his tail towards the man and Magiera understood what he wanted from her. She rolled her eyes but complied. She crouched behind Sturdil, resting one hand on his shoulder and the tip of her tail on the other, the spaded tip brushing his neck, making him flinch just enough for her to feel. If it was from her tail or the sight of her brother she didn’t know.

“What do you want Goatface!” It wasn’t so much a question as just the half-orc yelling more.

“I apologize for my friend sir, he was with my sister and me earlier and he grabbed the wrong pouch.” He was almost as smooth at lying as his sister. “I use that to hunt fowls in the nearby woods. Funny how they look alike.”

Eoin tossed the money sack back to Sturdil, and the human caught it before it hit him in his chest. The shopkeep’s eyes widened when he saw how large the coin purse was his eyes widened. He leaned around the tiefling man, to look at Sturdil.

“You’re welcome anytime sir!” He turned and entered his shop, leaving the door open. Sturdil shook his head at that a slowly stood up, using Magiera to balance. Before brushing the dirt off of himself he reached a hand out to help her up. She cast him aside glace and refused his help standing on her own.

“I won’t be doing business with him anymore,” He gave a friendly smile to her, “I didn’t think I’d see you again, Céline.”

Magiera turned her face away from him, to look to her brother, “My brother heard that there was trouble over here, so he brought me with to see.” His eyebrows arched in surprise at learning that the tieflings were siblings.

Sturdil looked at the two siblings, before seeing the similarities in their faces despite the rest of them looking different. Eoin was much taller than his sister, him too and even taller with his horns curving up into the sky. His skin was closer to a shade of red than hers, and his tail was long and smooth, to hers that had spines along it. A small but noticeable trait was his eyes. Unlike hers, his silver ones looked human. He also kept his brown hair in a long braid, the sides shaved down were hers hung loosely around her shoulders where it flipped out.

Nodding to the brother he held out his hand, “Sturdil Deepstag, thanks for the help.”

Eoin took it and have a firm squeeze and shake, “Eoin Hymlock. You already met my little sister.”

Sturdil smiled up at him, “I have, Céline, was quite helpful earlier.” He cast a quick glance at her, as he said that.

Eoin almost doubled over laughing, and pulled his hand back to clutch his stomach, “My sister? Helpful? Hahaha. She’s normally a brat.”

“I’m not a brat!” Magiera put her hands on her hips her tail lashing back and forth.

Eoin raised an eyebrow at her a smirk growing on his face, “Only a brat would say that.” He was only trying to get a rise out of her, and he knew exactly how to, not that it was hard.

She rested a hand on her breast, raising her own eyebrows, “So I’m not allowed to defend myself? You better sleep with one eye open, or I’ll tie your braid to your bedpost!”

The siblings dove into squabbling, causing Sturdil to laugh along with them. He shook his head trying to calm himself, “I have to thank both of you. I’ll buy us all dinner. Your choice as to where.”

Magiera’s attention was drawn back to the offer of a nicer meal than mother could make. Her tail ceased its lashing, to coil happily by her thighs. “We’d be gla-”

“We must decline; our mother is already making dinner.” Eoin cut her off, already trying to push his sister back towards the slums. She knew it’s because he didn’t trust her to be in anywhere nice, though at this hour with the sun setting their mother would be burning their dinner.

She wiggled from his grip to stand by Sturdil, “You can take my share, I’m not passing this up. Tell mother and father I’ll be home late,” She looked up at the human man, “So there is this great little tavern down this road. It doesn’t get many visitors but they have the best food.”

“Ma-” He caught himself before he said her real name, “Céline, no.”

She pouted, “Brother, I’ll be safe I promise.” She narrowed her eyes slightly, before adding in rapid infernal, “And I’ll behave, if I have another piece of mother’s charcoal, or as she calls it ‘chicken’ I’ll die.”

Eoin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Fine,” he turned his gaze to Sturdil, acting the part of a protective brother rather than an annoyed one, “Keep an eye on her.” Magiere glared at her brother, why did he have to make it sound like she was a child to be watched. She could behave if she wanted to. That wasn’t too often though. Eoin caught her look, “and you don’t stay out all night.”

“Yes, Eoin. I won’t,” Magiera nodded her head, not listening to him. She turned her back on him, her tail now waving slightly, “So dinner?”

The human man was now rubbing the back of his neck and glanced down at her nodding, “I’ll keep an eye on her, and yes so lead the way.”

Eoin sighed heavier this time and left without another word. Weaving back into the crowd and vanishing into it. Magiera grinned widely before walking off quickly towards the tavern, Sturdil trailing behind her.

He sped up his pace to match hers, “That was infernal, wasn’t it? What you were saying to your brother. What was it about,” he looked down at her, before adding quickly, “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Huh? Oh. It was nothing, just telling him that I couldn’t deal with our mother’s cooking. Woman burns everything she touches, she could even burn snow, how father and Eoin deal with it is beyond me.” Magiera shrugged her shoulders, she felt no need to lie about this “So I try to find less charred food on my own.”

Sturdil nodded slightly, “I can’t say I understand bad home cooking. My mother is quite talented but I agree on the dislike of overcooked food.” He started on about how one time his father had to cook and how that led to their donkey sleeping in his bed for the night.

Magiera turned her face away from him pretending to look at the closing stores, she smiled maybe spending time with the dopy human wouldn’t be that awful.


End file.
